"And the wall of the
city had twelve foundations, and on them twelve names of the
twelve apostles of the Lamb" (Rev. 21:14).

"And he called unto him
his twelve disciples, and gave them authority over unclean
spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of disease, and
all manner of sickness. Now the names of the twelve apostles are
these: The first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his
brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip,
and Bartholomew; Thomas, and Matthew the publican; James the son
of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean, and Judas
Iscariot... These twelve Jesus sent forth, and charged them."
(Matt. 10:1-5).

"And I also say unto
thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my
church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it"
(Matt. 16:18).

"...being built upon
the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself
being the chief corner stone" (Eph. 2:20).

The Wall
of the City

Reverting to the 21st chapter
of the book of the Revelation, I want to say something about
suitability for the glory of God. You notice that, in the vision
given to the Apostle, the vision of the holy city, new Jerusalem,
coming down from God out of heaven, the city is said to have the
glory of God. The foundations of the wall, as a part of the city,
bear the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. We understand
that this city, as seen in the vision by the apostle John, is a
representation of Christ fully manifested in the Church. This is
the fulfilment and realization of the words so familiar to us in
Paul's letter to the Ephesians - "He put all things in
subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over all
things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that
filleth all in all" (Eph. 1:22,23). And again in the
third chapter of that letter - "Unto him be the glory in
the church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations for ever and
ever". That is fulfilled and realized in the city, the
fulness of Christ in the Church.

The wall of the city is that
which speaks of its character and its strength. You would rightly
determine the significance of a walled city by looking at its
wall. If the wall were a poor thing, broken, unrepaired,
dilapidated, you would at once pass a poor judgment upon the city
behind it. If the wall is a great wall, a mighty wall, a wall
which evidently bears marks of care, you would say - 'There is
something behind that wall that is great'. You would say that it
betokened the character of the city. And so it is here. This is a
wonderful wall, a glorious wall, a mighty wall, and it speaks of
the character and the strength of the city - in other words, of
the Church, of Christ manifested in His Church at last.

The
Twelve Names on the Foundation of the Wall

The twelve apostles whose names
are on the foundations of the wall are a representative figure.
Twelve is always representative. The twelve stones in Jordan and
out of Jordan represented all Israel. The twelve stones of
Elijah's altar at Carmel represented all Israel. Twelve
represents Christ in fulness in His Church. The twelve Apostles
represent the Church. And what is here in these foundations is
representation of Christ in the Church by those whose names are
here. It is the testimony to Christ. You notice Matthew 10. He
chose twelve, He sent them forth: they were those who testified
of Him, who went before Him to bring Him into every place. They
spoke of Him; they had the mark of the King; where they went He
was portrayed. That, at least, was the thought. So they, the
twelve apostles, represent Christ in fulness at last in a full
Church. They testify to Him. One, who proved unsuitable, was
eventually changed for another who came in after prayer and
fasting.

"The twelve apostles of
the Lamb". How that name governs everything in this book!
Here all that we will say about it, as it comes in finally, is
that everything is recovered that was lost. The Lamb has
overcome, the Lamb has prevailed, the Lamb has redeemed: the Lamb
has done it all, and all is recovered unto God that had been lost
to God. And here is the testimony in the Church that all is
recovered, there is full recovery. That was the principle in the
rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem by Nehemiah. The wall had
been broken down and destroyed and burnt. The rebuilding of the
wall was that in the Old Testament which portrayed the recovery
of the full testimony of Jesus. Recovery - and it is all
recovered. The Lamb has done it. Throughout this book it is the
Lamb in action in a many-sided way recovering everything to God.

So in these fragments of the
vision, in representation, we have this whole matter of
suitability to the glory of God, suitability to the end which God
has in view - that is, the manifestation in fulness of the
character of His Son.

Now, most of these twelve
apostles have dropped from our view. We know little or nothing
about the majority of them. Their names are mentioned here at the
beginning. They are mentioned again, with Judas having fallen
out, in the first chapter of the book of the Acts; another is
incorporated; but we know nothing more. There are traditions,
plenty of them, but, so far as Scripture is concerned, the
majority of them have just gone out of our vision. Yes, that may
be so, but their names are preserved in heaven. What they
represent is never lost. They represented Christ, and let the men
on the earth pass out and be forgotten, but that which they
represented is maintained in heaven and reappears at last in the
final manifestation of Christ. Remember that! We may not signify
very much in ourselves upon this earth, amongst men, but if there
is anything of Christ about us, that will appear again, that is
preserved in heaven, it will be found at the last. So you begin
with the mention of their names at the beginning of the
dispensation, and then for the more part you know little or
nothing about them, and then they are all there at the end. That
is how it is. Every fragment of Christ, in any part of the
Church, preserved eternally, is represented by this
representative number.

Peter and James and John, of
course, are the most outstanding ones, and they seem to be always
representative of the rest. I think we can truly take them as
that. You notice in Matthew 10 - "First... Peter". It
is put like that. "The first... Peter". And it does not
mean that he just came first in number. Peter always was first.
He was given first place by the Lord; that is, he took a position
which was a first position. "First... Peter". Well, we
hardly need talk much about Peter here. We know very well we
could not say much that was new about Peter. He stands there, a
full-length portrait; we know him - I mean as he was before
Pentecost, in those days when the Master was here. James and
John: we do not know so much about them by record of their
behaviour. But we know one thing about them that they were called
"Boanerges, the sons of thunder" (Mark 3:17). I wonder
how you have interpreted that? I think that the interpretation
which is the true one is that they were men of very strong
temper. There are indications of that. Their reactions were never
moderate reactions; they were always very positive, very strong.
When they were present there was no mistaking that they were
present. "Sons of thunder".

How the Lord
Gets Suitability for His Glory

Now then, these men, in some
way, have got to be found suitable for the city of God, for the
foundations of the wall of the heavenly Jerusalem. Peter has got
to be suitable for the glory of God; James and John and all the
others have got to go through some handling by the Lord to bring
them to this final position: where the city having the glory of
God is revealed as the expression of Christ in fulness in the
Church, and representatively by these men.

That sets the ground for a
great deal of most profitable consideration, far beyond our time
and scope at present. But note some things. He chose twelve -
their names are given; He sent them forth, gave them power, and
said, "As ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of the heavens
is at hand". They were precipitated into something that as
yet they did not understand, about which they knew nothing
experimentally. They were called upon to move out into something,
which had yet in a future day to become a reality to themselves.
What did they know about the kingdom of the heavens? Very little
indeed! If they had known about the kingdom of the heavens as
they later did know, how differently they would have behaved, and
how they would have been delivered and saved from the awful
subsequent tragedy of their denial, of their forsaking and
fleeing and leaving their Master alone. They were precipitated
into this - and that is one of the tactical movements of the Lord
to get suitability. How often the Lord has to precipitate us into
something of which for the moment we know nothing - but by being
forced into that position, a very practical basis is laid down
for our coming to understanding. You note this movement.

The kingdom of the heavens -
what does that mean? Well, to begin with, it surely does mean heavenly-mindedness,
a heavenly mentality: that is, a heavenly conception of
things, a heavenly standard of things, a whole realm of things
which is not of this creation; different, utterly different; a
mentality which no natural-man possesses, which is only created
by the operation of the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven. Heavenly-mindedness.
But they were earthly-minded. When He, their Lord, had been
crucified, their world was gone, was shattered in pieces. They
had had such an earthly, worldly-minded conception of the kingdom
that when He was gone they had nothing left. Heavenly-mindedness:
it is what we call spirituality; that is, God's thoughts about
things, as other than man's thoughts; the mind of the Spirit of
God, as differing from the mind of man - the natural mind, to
which Paul gives so much attention in his first letter to the
Corinthians.

Patience - these were the most
impatient of men. They could not wait, they were always urging to
some precipitate action to bring in this kingdom. Right up to the
end, even after His resurrection, it was "Lord, dost thou at
this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6).
That was their disposition. 'Let us hurry this thing'. They knew
little about patience.

What did they know about the
heavenly nature of the kingdom as a universal thing? They were
Jews, wrapped up in Jewry, and it was a terrific thing that
happened when at last heaven broke in and showed them that Israel
was not the sum of God's redemptive purposes, that Gentiles also
had a place in this city. It represented a tremendous upheaval in
their whole mentality and acceptance and tradition - the
universality of the city lying four-square, with its gates open
in all directions. These twelve here were not like that, not at
all!

And what about the great
principle of subjection to Christ's absolute Lordship and
Headship; complete subjection, as was later brought out so fully
and clearly by the Apostle Paul? They knew nothing about that.
They were not at all subject, they were assertive. Well, this is
not suitable to the glory of God. This will not give them a name
upon the foundation of the city. Something has to happen - but,
praise God, it happened, and their names are there. It is a great
declaration and testimony to the fact that something has happened
in these men that they should be there in that capacity as the
glory of God. No one listening to Peter denying his Lord with
oaths and curses will say that that is for the glory of God.
Something had to happen, and it did happen, and they were made
suitable. And we are not thinking only of them. As I have said,
they are there as representing the whole Church, and what was
true of them has to be made true of the whole Church: for it is
the whole Church that is here set forth in this city and this
wall, and it has to be true of us.

You see, they were made
suitable firstly by a very practical method. They were
not made suitable by just sitting at their Master's feet and
hearing His teaching. They heard it all - His long discourse on
the mount at the beginning, His ultimate discourse in the upper
room, and all between: they heard it all. It did not change them.
We can be here; we can listen; we can attend a Bible School, and
get all the teaching and all the theory, and it does not make us
any more suitable for the glory of God. It may serve a background
purpose of showing us the way, but it does not do the thing.
God's methods are practical. Do lay hold of this. People
do not like to lay hold of it, but we shall not get anywhere
unless we do. God's methods of making us suitable are never
theoretical, they are always practical, deeply and drastically
practical.

And how does He do it? He does
it by contrast with ourselves: I mean by contradicting us,
putting us into situations and circumstances where what we are
naturally just cannot stand up to it. There is something so
completely contrasting with ourselves that we are altogether out
of our element in this realm. You see, the kingdom of the heavens
is that realm where we have naturally no capacity or functioning
power to exist. We are just not fit for it. I often wonder how
these men did feel and what they did say privately and in secret.
Peter, for instance. I think when the Lord had been speaking
about the Cross and Peter had rebuked Him and said, "Be it
far from thee, Lord: this shall never be unto thee" (Matt.
16:22), and the Lord turned to him and said, "Get thee
behind me, Satan", it must have gone home to Peter badly. I
think when he got away quietly, if not on the spot, he must have
said, 'Look here, Peter, that was wrong, you were wrong this
time'. A little later something else happened, he came up against
the Lord, and Peter might have spontaneously said, 'Wrong again,
Peter!' On the mount of transfiguration - "Lord, it is good
for us to be here: if thou wilt, I will make here three
tabernacles, one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah.
And there came a voice, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I
am well pleased; hear ye him" (Matt. 17:1-8). I can hear
Peter saying, 'Wrong again, Peter!'

How often it goes like that, so
that we begin to mistrust ourselves altogether. We have
constantly to say, 'There you are, you are wrong again, you have
put your foot in it again, said the wrong thing again, done the
wrong thing again', until in the end we cry, 'Can we ever be
right?' That is the important thing with the Lord.Peter
was so right that it had to be proved that he could not be right
at all in the realm of the kingdom of the heavens. Before he
could be right, he had to be proved incapable of being right in
himself. There is another realm, standard and order of things,
and this practical application of the principle of being
translated out of one kingdom into another is a very ruthless
thing, and it does bring us down, so that we "have no
confidence in the flesh". That is Paul's way of putting it
(Phil. 3:3). These men were self-confident, they thought they
knew, that they could do it, that they could go through with it,
and again and again they had to turn to themselves and
say, 'Wrong again!' and in the end I think they despaired of ever
being right at all - and the Lord took them up there. Here on the
one side is the man who says, 'I will' - "I will
lay down my life for thee" (John 13:37) - and he has to be
shown that he cannot; that is, the 'I will' man has to be
translated into another kingdom where his 'I will' is of another
order and not his own. It is not the 'I will' of natural
strength, but of Divine strength. Peter was no less an 'I will'
man after Pentecost, he was a far greater 'I will' man; but he
was in another realm, his 'I will' was of a different order.

On the other hand, there is the
man who said, "I will not" - Thomas. "Except I
see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into
the print of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not
believe" (John 20:25). Thomas seems to be the man who
is always holding back like that: he will not commit himself.
Thomas had to go through exactly the same process in a practical
way. He had to become a man who in another realm would say, 'I
will not' - but that is of a different order. It is right to put
back our own disposition, under the government of Christ and by
the Holy Spirit, so that we are not carried by our impulses, our
own disposition, our own way at all.

If we are naturally of the 'I
will' type, that is brought so completely under the Holy Spirit's
government that there is brought about another kind of 'I will'
man altogether. We do not become jellyfish without any will at
all, under the hands of God, but another kind of 'I will'. On the
other hand, if we are naturally of the 'I will not' kind, we are
made 'I will-ers' under the Holy Spirit; but also we become those
who are of very great value in the Church, who are not just
carried away by any whim, emotion, idea, but who are making very
sure of the Lord. That is a good thing provided it is not my
stubbornness, not my pigheadedness, not that I must have a sound
argument before I move. That can be in the flesh, it can be
nature; it may hold us back, keep us out of much, as it did
Thomas. These men went through a practical school. We have to be
undone in one realm. We may be all agog, too ready to take hold,
to take the lead and be masters of the situation - it may be
nature or training. It has to be emptied out in the realm of
nature. It will come back in another realm. I believe that Paul
was translated, with a great deal that the Lord could use in his
make-up, translated into another realm. It came under the power
of God, and that is the thing.

So Pentecost saw these men
taken up by the kingdom of the heavens, and they understood then
the nature of the kingdom of the heavens, and still the work went
on, and at last their names are found on the foundations of that
which sets forth the glory of God in Christ in the Church.
"Unto him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus
unto all generations for ever and ever".The
Lord has us in hand in a very practical way, and if sometimes you
get to the place where you wonder if any good thing can come out
of you, if ever you will be right, and not always wrong, just
understand that that is a way to another positiveness, another
value. These men did serve positive values in the kingdom of the
heavens. But see the way they came to it. The Lord has us in
hand, and our bad times are just His practical way of bringing in
that which is of Christ to supplant that which is of ourselves.

First published in "A Witness and A
Testimony" magazine, July-August 1952, Vol 30-4